“Why is it so difficult to capture a hyper-mobile workforce? Reflections from field research about atypical migration in Poland”
“Why is it so difficult to capture a hyper-mobile workforce? Reflections from field research about atypical migration in Poland”

Author(s): Kamil Matuszczyk
Subject(s): Labor relations, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: hyper-mobile; workforce; field research; atypical migration; Poland;
Summary/Abstract: While the size of migrant population in a particular country is portrayed as a ‘hard-to-survey population’, there are sectors where the very nature of the work and circumstances make it impossible to measure it (Massey 2014; Abrantes 2015), such as the household sector and agriculture. Temporariness, the need for flexibility, informality and labor intensiveness are features of this sector. Operating in the shadow economy makes it virtually impossible to estimate the number of foreign workers in these two sectors. This challenge is caused by the workers disappearing from the official registers and difficulties in empirical research. Certain daily practices make it impossible to measure how many workers work for a given employer at a time. However, explaining this methodological difficulty only with undeclared work in the informal economy is too general and impoverishes the understanding of hypermobility of workers in low-skilled labour (i.e. jobs characterised by low prestige, low salaries, ease of obtaining, lack of formal requirements for candidates' qualifications).

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